Located on (Convoy-perpendicular) Engineer Road, this 7-year-old restaurant has booths, Korean calligraphy covering its wallpaper, and a low rumble in the air coming from vents hanging above each table. It’s a compact setting for yang nyum kalbi, tender, marinated short rib ($27.99) that practically caramelizes onto the grill’s grating in front of you.

And to the newcomer, Dae Jang Keum presents a few challenges beyond cooking with tongs and eating with chopsticks.

For one, its wooden tables extend like low, wall-mounted ironing boards. At the center of most are tabletop grills with dugouts holding a hot bellyful of coals inches above your legs. Don’t be too carefree with your knees!

And as you’re grilling up smoky-sweet bulgogi, thinly sliced meats ($14.99-$18.99) marinated in soy sauce, look out for sparks coming from that grate.

There’s also a language barrier between the Korean waitresses and English-only tables. But the menu has English explanations and pictures of different cuts of raw beef and proteins.

If you’re dining with a group, the restaurant offers different packages (say, six people can have a combo of barbecue-able items for $109).

More Korean BBQ off Convoy:

The Kim family, the owners of Manna BBQ, just opened a second branch in San Marcos at 740 Nordahl Road, (760) 743-3300. It’s $19.50 for Manna’s regular all-you-can-eat deal, and $24.95 for the premium grilled meats.

The full barbecue and banchan spread at Dae Jang Keum. — John Gastaldo

The full barbecue and banchan spread at Dae Jang Keum.
— John Gastaldo

Before you think Dae Jang Keum’s kitchen does nothing more than wash barbecue remnants from their dishes, they also prepare spicy seafood stews, cold noodle plates, vegetable-and-meat combos in hot stone bowls, and soups like rice cake soup. It’s traditionally served for the Korean Lunar New Year — next slated to begin Feb. 10. Each sticky coin of rice pasta you eat supposedly bestows an extra year of life.

And if DIY cooking is too troublesome, the kitchen will smoke-sizzle your pork ribs ($17.99) and whole squid ($14.99) or whatever upon request.

Before long your table will be concealed in plates great and small — two diners recently counted 20 for lunch. These were mainly barbecue dipping sauces and an array of free appetizers automatically delivered to your table called banchan. At Dae Jang Keum, the banchan offered varies, but usually covers the tongue map, from bitter spicy radishes to potatoes in a sweet soy sauce (gamja jorim); from salty fish cake strips (odeng) to, of course, kimchee.

About the restaurant’s name: Dae Jang Keum is a variation of Dae Jang Geum cq, a 16th-century king’s female doctor. In the early 2000s, there was a TV series based on the same woman — South Korea went wild for the epic about a cook-turned-doctor known as “The Jewel in the Palace,” which is the phrase painted on the glass outside the Kearny Mesa restaurant.

Take your time sharing this back story: It’ll give your rib-eye steak ($27.99) time to char around its edges.